Rape case student 'was drunk at party'

A UNIVERSITY student who alleges that she was raped after a college party was almost incoherent with drink when she left to go to bed, a jury at the Old Bailey was told yesterday.

Adrian Williamson, a fellow student at King's College, London, said he had been drinking with the woman for most of the evening, and at one stage she was so drunk she fell over backwards.

She appeared 'very friendly' to other men at the party and gave one a passionate kiss as he sat on the stairs, Mr Williamson told the court.

Mr Williamson said he and a woman at the party later knocked on Miss X's door. Austen Donnellan, 21, who is accused of raping her, answered dressed only in jeans. Miss X was in bed naked and it seemed like there had been some kind of intimacy between them, he said. Mr Williamson added that Miss X had said all men were bastards and that Mr Donnellan was not a nice person. But her remarks were light-hearted and in a 'nudge nudge' manner of speaking.

Mr Donnellan, 21, a student at King's College, has pleaded not guilty to raping Miss X on 6 December last year.

Another student, Jamie Eden, told the court he was telephoned by Miss X in the early hours of the morning and went to her room to find her almost hysterical.

She claimed to him that she had woken to find a man having sexual intercourse with her. Later, she believed that same man had been subjecting her to oral intercourse. She awoke later still to find that the man in bed with her was Mr Donnellan.

Mr Eden said she mentioned a friend called Tim and remarked that 'if it had been Tim, I would have been able to endure it'.

He took that to mean that there would have been no complaint about rape, if the man involved had been Tim.

The trial was adjourned until today.